Joshua Jackson

Joshua Jackson is the all-American guy who's actually Canadian. The career of the Fringe and former Dawson's Creek star is unpredictable but consistently pretty successful. Try as you might to typecast him as a TV actor, but you'll find that he's equally proficient on the London Stage. Try to typecast him as a mainstream film actor, and you'll see a sampling of independent films scattered among his studio movies.

Appeal

Joshua Jackson is so deceptively modest about the women in his life. He would really like us to believe that he's clueless about women, and on the surface, it sounds plausible. He describes himself as clumsy, saying that women don't swoon over him, and going so far as to add, "If I only dated actresses, I'd be a very lonely man."

Last time we checked, Brittany Daniel, Katie Holmes, Rosario Dawson, and Julia Stiles were among his ex-girlfriends. While Joshua Jackson has yet to hook up with Uma Thurman (he calls her "one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen"), it is our sincere hope that these aforementioned actresses helped ease his burden of loneliness. It's also worth mentioning that Jackson's appeal to women knows no international boundaries. He received two letters from Japanese fans of Dawson's Creek who each asked him for his hand in marriage. He politely refused, but he did accept the advances of another foreign beauty, German model/actress Diane Kruger, who has been his on-again, off-again companion (the Hollywood norm) since 2006.

Success

Just like the hockey team he played for in the Mighty Ducks films, Joshua Jackson was the underdog actor who made good. Not necessarily the hunkiest or most talented performer, he made good use of his industry connections early on and was rewarded with a solid and consistent career that at least some of his "bigger name" co-stars wish they had now. Our apologies, James Van Der Beek.

Shifting with relative ease between the big and small screens, Joshua Jackson has often been able to transform quirky characters into cool ones, never more so than with his role as Pacey Witter on Dawson's Creek. Since then, he has remained a visible presence as a supporting actor in films like Urban Legend and Cruel Intentions, while taking on lead roles in others such as Shutter and One Week. He's currently a healthy supplement to our regular J.J. Abrams entertainment diet on the sci-fi series, Fringe.

Joshua Jackson Biography

A native of film-hungry Vancouver, Joshua Jackson had entertainment in the blood, thanks to his mother Fiona Jackson, who was already working in the industry as a casting director. His first role was less than two years after his birth, when he played an infant in The Changeling. While he was too young to remember it, 9 out of 10 infants surveyed agreed that it was a star-making performance.

As he grew older, Joshua Jackson became more interested in acting and less interested in school. His mom tried to dissuade him from acting by sending him to commercial auditions, thinking he probably wouldn't make it. Instead, he would nail the auditions, and would come to live out every Canadian boy's dream by acting with Emilio Estevez -- oh yeah, and playing hockey -- in not one, but three Mighty Ducks movies. In the role of Charlie, the team's captain, Jackson led his on-screen team to victory and also contributed to an upsurge in California hockey interest that led to the NHL expansion team, the Anaheim Mighty Ducks (later shortened to the Ducks). His credits in school were not so flattering, as his acting career got him expelled from two consecutive Vancouver high schools for lack of attendance. He also had an attitude problem, but that was a genetic actor trait, not an educational issue.

joshua jackson on dawson's creek and on stage in london

A cameo as Film Class Guy No. 1 in 1997's Scream 2 introduced Joshua Jackson to screenwriter/director Kevin Williamson. This led to a pop culture pinnacle for both men when Williamson cast Jackson as Pacey Witter on the WB series, Dawson's Creek. The teen drama became the network's highest-rated show, and brought the wise-cracking Pacey into the mainstream with Joshua Jackson along for the ride.

Running until 2003, Dawson's Creek also enhanced Joshua Jackson's movie career. Key supporting roles came to fruition in the horror entry, Urban Legend and the sexy manipulation drama, Cruel Intentions, as well as a lead role opposite Paul Walker in the WASP thriller, The Skulls. All of these paled in comparison to what Jackson dutifully noted as a career highlight; his guest spot on The Simpsons. It's something that we all aspire to do, no matter how bad our cartoon likenesses may look. After his TV series had run its course, Jackson headed to England and starred on stage with the formidable Patrick Stewart in the well-received production of A Life in the Theatre.

joshua jackson stars in shutter and fringe

In 2006, Joshua Jackson returned to North America and re-teamed with Emilio Estevez for the political love letter, Bobby. Two years later, he went back to horror as a photographer seeing spirits in his pictures in Shutter. There was nothing scary about his co-star, though. She was the lovely Rachael Taylor.

The fall of 2008 brought with it another can't-miss television opportunity -- the chance to star in a new J.J. Abrams series, Fringe. Joshua Jackson did just that, playing Peter Bishop, one third of a team investigating those unexplained things that go bump in the night. In 2009, with Fringe renewed for another season, Jackson returned to his roots to star and executive-produce the drama, One Week, about a terminally ill man who motorcycles across Canada. Easily balancing between homegrown cinema and Hollywood television, Jackson is no longer just a "teen star." Too bad James Van Der Beek didn't take notes.